


Love Bites

by tansybells



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, F/F, Featuring, Human/Vampire Relationship, Near Death Experiences, Vampire Bites, Vampire Hunters, Vampire Turning, at the beginning at least
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:20:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26215528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tansybells/pseuds/tansybells
Summary: As a vampire, Edelgard has one rule:  never return to a meal. One night, however, she finds a human with blood so sweet, so luscious and divine that she can't help but hunt her down once again in the hopes of one more taste. But as it turns out, Hilda is no ordinary human, and Edelgard's life will never be the same again.
Relationships: Hilda Valentine Goneril/Edelgard von Hresvelg
Comments: 10
Kudos: 56
Collections: 2020 Ultra Rarepair Big Bang





	1. Meeting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had the wonderful pleasure of working with Jess (@charbon_et_eau), and she absolutely blew my mind away with the picture she drew to accompany this fic! You can see her illustration [here.](https://twitter.com/Charbon_et_Eau/status/1300966636367745024?s=20) It's seriously so amazing! ♡

Hunting was far from pleasant, but like so many things in her half-life, it was a necessary evil. Edelgard had known this—acted upon it, even—for decades. Yet all the while, she had prayed to whatever deities might be up there that maybe,  _ maybe  _ something would change.

So far, it seemed like her prayers had yet to be heard.

She still had to eat. She still felt the ever-growing thirst that gnawed further away at her willpower with each moment that she did not wet her lips with blood. She still had to stalk through the streets and fill her stomach with whatever poor soul she came across.

Though to be fair, she could afford to be a  _ little  _ picky in her choice of meal. While drunkards were typically the easiest to come across, and the combined benefits of their alcohol-addled memories and lack of inhibitions made it easy for her to feed on them without issue, the blood of those who never put up a fight was typically far too alcoholic for her taste. Drug addicts fell into a similar category.

No, her favorite meals were routinely supplied by nothing else but standard, perfectly sober humans. The thrill of the chase, the satisfaction of finally pinning down and taking pleasure in her meal—there was nothing that could compare to the feeling of self-sufficiency that overwhelmed her as she went in for the bite.

Pointed ears twitched at the sound of footsteps; Edelgard turned her head to locate the noise. She was unfamiliar enough with tonight’s town that she didn’t exactly know where they were coming from, but it was a simple enough matter to leap from one rooftop to another to find them. And soon enough, the lamps that lined the streets illuminated a solitary woman walking in the night.

The young woman was alone, Edelgard noted with a burst of glee, and while her stride suggested that she had a destination in mind, her pace said that it was nowhere she needed to be fast. 

In other words, where could she  _ possibly  _ find a more perfect meal?

Edelgard ran her tongue over her lips, a smile slowly spreading at the thought of a full belly.

But time was short. The woman’s languid pace gave her a very small window during which to act. If Edelgard waited for too long before making her move, she would move away from the convenient side streets and towards the plain visibility of the main streets. And if that happened, Edelgard would have to give up on her easy target and return to the process of prowling through the night.

Her soles hit the cobblestone pavement with a soft sound as she dropped down from the roof.

The woman paused, pink hair swaying gently as she turned to glance over her shoulder. Edelgard could only imagine what might be running through her head. Curious as she might have been, however, there was the issue that allowing herself to consider her meal’s thoughts would only make the process of feeding all the more difficult. More importantly though, the time for action had come.

Taking advantage of the shadows lining the alleyway, Edelgard crept up from behind. She wrapped her arms around the woman’s chest with a sigh and, layering her voice with enough power that it practically dropped with her hypnotic ability, brought her mouth close to her prey’s ear. 

“It’s time to rest,” she purred, clutching the woman close despite the slight difference in height between them. “I will not harm you any more than is necessary for survival.”

The heartbeat beneath her hand picked up sharply in pace, but that was to be expected. Edelgard smiled. That the woman had yet to wrest herself away from her grasp was a sure indication that her hypnosis had fully overwhelmed her will, a fact that Edelgard took advantage of as she leaned in towards the creamy flesh of her neck and inhaled deeply.

Poor thing. She smelled so sweet, nearly divine with fear. 

It was a simple matter to drag her prey back towards the shadows, despite the fact that she was weak with hunger. And as she settled the woman down upon the ground, laying her prone, Edelgard crouched down beside her for a more in-depth inspection of her meal.

How beautiful. The woman clearly took care of herself, seeing as how her skin was soft and supple, plump beneath her fingers as Edelgard searched out the carotid artery that ran down her neck. It wasn’t necessary—the artery screamed out to her senses, she was so hungry—but Edelgard had long found pleasure in the simple ritual she had created for herself.

Tucking long strands of loose platinum hair behind her ear, Edelgard opened her mouth as wide as she could manage, wide enough that the muscles of her face began to ache from the stretch. Then, as she cradled the woman close in a macabre mockery of a lover’s embrace, she positioned her fangs against the throbbing artery and bit down.

Her fangs sliced through skin without resistance. The woman stiffened within her arms. But whatever toxin Edelgard’s bite released soon left the woman weak, her body limp and unresponsive. Sparkling eyes fluttered to a close, and it was only thanks to experience and the subtle rise and fall of her chest that Edelgard knew that her life remained intact.

Feeding was messy. It always was. Edelgard had yet to discover a method of eating her fill that didn’t leave blood running sticky trails down her chin and her clothing stained from her efforts. But just as she’d hoped, the blood that she so greedily drank from the woman’s neck was rich and luscious, a velvet nectar that she was loath to pull away from. 

It was nearly impossible. She’d intended to source several people over the course of the night in the hopes of taking just a little bit from each person, thus lessening the risk of greater harm for each person exponentially, but this woman—this woman’s blood was sweet and warm in her stomach, and with each gulp, she found herself craving more and more.

The thought of draining the woman of every single drop of blood was… an attractive one. It didn’t matter that she felt fit to burst. She had done it before. Surely she could muster the appetite to do so once more.

But how unfair it would be for the woman in her arms. She had asked for none of this, and while Edelgard could not control the hunger that had driven her to bite in the first place, she could at the least control what she did once the hunger had abated.

Slowly, her heart breaking as she took her last swallow of blood and lowered the woman down onto the ground, Edelgard sighed. As sluggish as her full stomach made her feel, it would be irresponsible of her to slink on back to her lair without taking a moment to care for her victim. The woman had been kind enough to provide her with a meal, albeit unwittingly; she could be kind enough to ensure that the woman didn’t bleed out in a back alley. 

So she drew a length of rough cotton fabric from her coat pocket, which she carried for just this purpose, and after propping the back of the woman’s head up on her leg, began wrapping the fabric around the wound on her neck. Her lack of medical training made actually knowing what she was doing impossible, so she just continued wrapping fabric and applying gentle pressure to the wound until the blood flow slowed to a trickle.

“Thank you,” Edelgard whispered as soon as the deed was done, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand before leaning in and softly kissing the woman’s forehead. It was the only gratitude she could offer in the brief moment before she left the woman propped up against a wall and escaped into the night.

* * *

A few nights later, Edelgard found herself watching the woman from a shadowed position atop a building. Ever since she’d drank the blood of the pink-haired woman, she had found herself running her tongue along the inside of her mouth constantly in search of some last, precious remnant of her blood. She longed for one final taste of that velvety nectar.

Thus, she had broken her one and only rule when it came to feeding: she had returned to a human from whom she had fed.

At first, she’d done it just to see what the woman was up to, just to see what was different about her. What did she do that made her taste so delicious? Why was it that Edelgard couldn’t get the woman out of her head?

Edelgard pressed a hand to her stomach as it rumbled and made her growing appetite known. Yet even as she acknowledged it, she had to recognize that she wasn’t  _ actually  _ hungry. She could merely smell the woman on the air, and her memories made her desire nothing more than to pin her down and consume. Yet now that she paused to consider it…

What was stopping her from doing just that?

There was some sort of magic—or a venom, perhaps—to her bite, after all. She wasn’t entirely sure. Edelgard had never met another vampire, which made experience her best and only teacher. What she  _ had _ learned, though, was that the people that she bit never seemed to retain any memory of their interaction, much less any memory of her.

She never let herself return to a victim for posterity’s sake. She felt bad enough that she had to consume the lifeblood of another person; she’d feel even worse if she let herself take advantage of them  _ twice.  _ But with that in mind, wouldn’t it stand to reason that she could ostensibly return to her most recent victim and… feed again?

Edelgard mulled the idea over and, licking her lips, she decided that she liked it. She could break her rule. Just one time. And as long as she let Hubert know so they could consider the potential necessity of moving on from this place. But that was something for Edelgard to think about later.

For now, it was time for a snack.

Grabbing onto the lip of the rooftop she had been crouching upon, Edelgard carefully lowered herself down to the sidewalk below.

And as she snuck up behind the woman, Edelgard found herself overwhelmed by a sense of déjà vu. But wasn’t that for the best? If things were going just the same as they had the last time she’d chanced upon the woman, then it would stand to reason that she would have as much ease in drinking from her as before. Once close enough behind her, she languidly wrapped her arms around the young woman’s shoulders.

It struck her that despite having failed to notice it before, the woman’s shoulders were concerningly muscled. But as she leaned in to purr in the woman’s ear once again, a gentle “Remember me?” or something equally ghoulish, the woman twisted beneath her touch. She felt a strong pair of arms wrap around her torso and, before she knew it, she was sent flying through the air.

Edelgard’s upper back landed on the ground with a solid  _ crunch,  _ her lower half jackknifing over the rest of her. She cried out in pain and curled up in the fetal position, a long-hidden instinct urging her to protect her soft, fleshy organs. She wanted nothing more than to stay like that and recover, but she couldn’t let herself fall apart like that. Not when she was potentially in danger like this.

But before she could scramble up to her feet and defend herself, the woman pushed her over onto her stomach and firmly planted her knee on her back, fully immobilizing her.

“Oh my god,” the woman said, surprised even as she held Edelgard to the ground. Edelgard struggled to watch over her shoulder as the woman twirled a lock of hair around her finger nervously and chattered away. “Oh my god! I  _ wasn’t  _ dreaming! It was fucking real!”

She poked at Edelgard’s cheek. The urge to snap at her was overwhelming, but to her credit, Edelgard refrained from doing so. “I  _ did  _ get attacked by a hot lady with white hair!”

“How do you remember?” Edelgard sputtered. While she’d been able to hold back from snapping at the woman, her perplexment at hearing the woman’s claim was overwhelming. “I  _ bit  _ you. You should have forgotten everything!”

“Um… yeah, about that, I guess I didn’t?” The woman giggled; Edelgard narrowed her eyes. Nothing made sense. She should have forgotten.  _ She should have forgotten!  _ Her entire way of life, the life she’d built with her best friend,  _ hinged  _ upon the fact that her victims consistently forgot.

“Well? What are you going to do now?” Edelgard spat her question out, her upper lip curling in a snarl. The woman was aware that she was a vampire; there was no point in trying to hide the truth of her nature.

The woman clucked her tongue as she thought about it. “Well, I hadn’t really like,  _ planned  _ on getting jumped tonight, so it’s not like I had something in mind. How do you feel about, uh…” Edelgard rolled her eyes as the woman thought. It looked like it was taking a lot of effort on her part, though she soon paid the price for her dismissiveness as the woman added more pressure to the point on Edelgard’s back where she was being pinned to the ground. The woman snapped her fingers.

“I got it! Promise you won’t do it again?” she asked.

“Excuse me?” Edelgard blinked, caught off-guard by the bounce in the woman’s step.

“I said, do you promise to not try and jump me again?”

Edelgard furrowed her brows with a frown. Nothing about this woman made sense. She’d thought so before, but her opinion was only further cemented by her excited request for a promise.

“Ah… yes?” Edelgard tried. To her surprise, the woman took her knee off of Edelgard’s back at her agreement. Then, after standing to her feet, the woman held her hand out for Edelgard to take. Hesitantly, Edelgard did so. The woman’s hand was warm and softened by constant applications of lotion, if Edelgard’s sensitive nose was correct, but her hand was also covered in the calluses, indicative of some sort of menial labor. Edelgard stared at the contradictory hand, even as the woman pulled her up to her feet.

“Alright!” The woman squeezed Edelgard’s hand in her own; Edelgard was briefly overcome by the terrifying sensation of her bones grinding against each other in the woman’s grasp. Yet the woman continued talking. “Well, now that that’s out of the way…!” 

Her grip tightened on Edelgard’s hand, and the joviality in her bright eyes hardened into something more intimidating. Something in Edelgard’s chest fluttered. “Why the _fuck_ did you bite me, huh? It _hurt_! And I had to wear a scarf like, _everywhere,_ so all of my friends thought I was covering up a bunch of hickeys. Do you realize how _embarrassing_ that was? My own brother couldn’t make eye contact with me for days! My _brother_!”

“I needed to eat.” Edelgard spoke as sharp and succinctly as she could, her head lifted high in confidence. The woman was a lot shorter than she’d thought; they were nearly the same height. That gave Edelgard hope that, if something happened again, she might be able to hold her own. “You were simply the most convenient thing around at the time.”

“Oh.” The woman pouted. Edelgard couldn’t tell if she was being completely serious. “So… it’s not because you were totally enchanted by my ethereal beauty?”

Edelgard snorted with laughter as she shook her head. “No! I didn’t even  _ think  _ about that until after you were unconscious.”

“Oh, so you  _ do _ think I’m beautiful!” Edelgard recoiled as the woman leaned in close, taking up all of her personal space with a wink and a petulant grin. “It’s okay, you know. You can just say it. I’ll be insufferable otherwise.”

“How can I say you’re beautiful when I don’t even know your name?” Edelgard asked. Immediately, her stomach dropped as she realized just what she’d said. This woman, she was supposed to be a nameless, faceless human. Names made it harder to eat without feeling guilty, and as much as her victims might have deserved that guilt, Edelgard knew that she needed to eat if she wanted to continue living, if she wanted to continue walking the earth alongside the masses and watch the world change around her.

“Aw, rude.” The woman’s pout returned, and Edelgard’s stomach twisted. Oh, she was most  _ certainly  _ being toyed with at this point. But… the chance to interact with someone other than her dour companion was absolutely thrilling. She should’ve turned away. She should’ve. But she didn’t want to.

The woman cleared her throat, and Edelgard realized with a shock that the woman was holding her hand out towards her once more. “I’m Hilda,” she said with a smile. “Most people call me Miss Goneril, but I think we’ve been intimate enough that you can just stick with Hilda.”

Edelgard coughed self-consciously as she took the proffered hand and shook it gently. “I’m… um, Edelgard. My name’s Edelgard.”

Hilda raised a brow. “No family name?”

“No,” Edelgard replied. “It’s just me.”

“Oh.” Hilda smiled, and Edelgard realized that there was a sadness in the expression. “Yeah, I get that. I see my brother sometimes, but I left the family a long time ago. A single woman, all alone—I guess you can understand why I was so freaked out to wake up in a dark alley all those nights ago, huh?”

“I’m sorry?” Edelgard offered. She felt bad, yes, but she knew deep down that she only felt guilty because she’d been caught.

“Sorry’s not gonna cut it,” Hilda said with a toss of her head. “I had to lay low for like, three whole days until your weird-ass bite marks finally went away. Don’t you get how much of a crime it is to cover up skin as perfect as this?” She gestured at the flawless skin of her neck with a petulant, put-out smile.

Edelgard shrugged. There wasn’t anything there for Hilda to be upset about, after all. With a groan and a roll of her eyes, Hilda rubbed a spot on her neck with a few fingers, rubbed away the concealer she wore to reveal a mostly-healed mark from Edelgard’s fangs.

Hilda’s dramatic reveal filled Edelgard with shame, and like a direct response to that intense feeling, her stomach grumbled audibly. She curled in on herself, wrapping her arms around herself like doing so would somehow muffle the sound.

It was incredibly clear, however, that Hilda had heard it.

“Holy shit,” Hilda laughed, crossing her arms over her chest and tilting her head to the side. “Hungry, much?”

A heartbeat later, her jaw dropped, and she reached up to delicately cover her mouth with a slender hand. “Oh my god. You totally came here to eat me again. You came—” her eyes widened “—you came to  _ eat me out _ !”

“No!” Horrified, Edelgard held herself away from the sudden, surprisingly predatory glint in Hilda’s eyes.

“So what you’re trying to say is,” Hilda hummed smugly, “you  _ didn’t  _ come with super-salacious intentions. You  _ didn’t  _ come to bite my neck and suck up some more of my sweet, sweet blood.” She clucked her tongue and shook her head. “I’ve read vampire erotica! I  _ know  _ you get off on drinking sweet virgin blood, Edelgard!”

Edelgard rolled her eyes. Like Hilda, beautiful and well-endowed as she was, could possibly be a virgin.

Hilda gasped mockingly, like she’d somehow read Edelgard’s mind. “Ex- _ cuse _ me,” she said, “but I’ve read enough horror books to know that virgin blood has to do with its use in  _ ritual _ as opposed to like,  _ sex. _ ”

“Virgin blood has nothing to do with it,” Edelgard said through the laughter that began to bubble up from her chest. “It doesn’t matter whether or not you’ve—if you’ve had sex or if you’ve been in a ritual or any of that ridiculous nonsense.”

“And so, you came back to drink my blood again,” Hilda concluded triumphantly. “Bold. I can respect that. Sucks that my perfect neck is off-limits, though.”

Edelgard furrowed her brows. It sounded like Hilda wasn’t…  _ entirely  _ averse to the idea of letting her feed again. That she’d been angrier about the fact that she’d been jumped in the middle of the night than she had been about having been bitten in the first place.

Thus, quietly, fully aware of the fact that she was probably going to be quickly and completely shut down, Edelgard asked, “Does that mean I could bite… somewhere else?”

“It depends,” Hilda replied. Edelgard’s stomach began to churn as her once-victim fluttered her impossibly long lashes. “Am I gonna get to bite back?”

* * *

The following morning, Edelgard skulked into the living room of the house she shared with her human companion, Hubert. She hadn’t gotten back until very late that morning, and while she was perfectly capable of acting autonomously, she felt that he at least deserved to have some explanation for her tardiness.

But, as she looked at her friend, watched him studiously pore over some new and unfamiliar book, she rubbed the side of her neck and silently sighed.

How she intended to tell him that not only had she broken one of their cardinal rules, but that she had somehow wound up in the bed of a human woman, she didn’t know. But he deserved to know.

She cleared her throat.

“I may have erred in my judgement,” Edelgard said a moment later, self-consciously crossing her arms over her chest as she leaned against the doorjamb. Hubert looked up from his book, concern glinting in the gold of his eyes. He said nothing, however, merely closed the book and waited for her to continue.

Hubert’s willingness to let her go at her own pace was something she appreciated about him. Despite being decades younger, he’d cared for her since his teenage years, and he’d treated her with the same endless reserves of patience the whole time. He was the reason she was no longer a half-feral vampire forever roaming the countryside in search of victims from which to eat. What a pair they had once made. A human teenager caring for a woman who, for all intents and purposes, appeared to be in her mid-to-late twenties. 

Yes, perhaps it was bizarre for a human to care so intensely for a vampire, but Edelgard was eternally grateful for his continued presence in her life. He had cared for her for so long, and while the thought of him aging was a sobering one, she knew that she would one day be returning the favor.

But for now, she could regard him as an equal.

“As agreed, I don’t go back to a person after feeding upon them.” Edelgard took a deep breath, closing her eyes in preparation for Hubert’s disappointment. “I have broken that rule.”

“Do I need to take care of the situation?” Hubert made as if to rise from the comfort of his armchair, but Edelgard lifted her hand to stop him.

“She doesn’t seem to present much of an issue at the moment,” she assured him, a faint flush warming her cheeks. Not only had Hilda been relieved to hear that she wasn’t imagining their encounter, but the sheer enthusiasm with which she’d approached the latter part of their second meeting left Edelgard fairly certain that there was nothing for her to worry about.

“At the moment,” Hubert repeated skeptically. “That doesn’t mean that she won’t be an issue later.” He paused. “If that isn’t what you want, then why would you tell me this?”

“I wanted to keep you aware of what is currently going on, is all.” Edelgard lifted one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. She appreciated him, yes, and always would—but even she couldn’t deny the fact that he tended to lean towards being overbearing.

“Do you at least know the woman’s name?” he asked, and while Edelgard knew that extending the information to him was something of a risky decision, she wanted to assuage his concerns.

“Yes. Hilda.” The name sounded like a song as it fell from her lips; she found herself smiling at the end of it. For someone who had been so recently fed upon by a vampire, Hilda had been incredibly boisterous and full of life. So full of life, in fact, that Edelgard’s back still hurt from where it had connected with the pavement upon their reunion.

“I see. Hilda.” Hubert set his book aside on the little table by his chair, beside the steaming cup of tea that he’d probably been nursing before her arrival. “Is there anything else I should be aware of?”

Edelgard rubbed her chin in contemplation. What more could she tell him without risking the life of the young woman? 

“She’s quite athletic,” she eventually added, “to the point that she could even take me by surprise.” 

Hubert’s golden eyes widened with shock. “Did she?”

“No, no,” Edelgard lied. If Hubert knew that Hilda had so much as laid a hand on her, there would be little hope for her continued survival. He  _ certainly  _ didn’t need to know that her athleticism extended to… other activities as well.

Hubert said nothing in return, merely raised a skeptical brow. Aware of the battle of wills she had begun, Edelgard mimicked the expression. This was far from their first disagreement, and it was far from the last. But in the end, Edelgard would outlive him, and they both knew that she wasn’t going to back down anytime soon.

“I’ll let you know if anything changes,” Edelgard said, once it was clear that Hubert was moving on from their silent confrontation. But before turning to leave, she paused. 

“Hubert,” she added, “please don’t do anything untoward. I don’t know how long we should remain in this city, but I wouldn’t prefer to be prematurely run out by villagers carrying torches and pitchforks.”

“I don’t believe modern people have much to do with torches and pitchforks anymore,” Hubert said as he reached to pick his book up again. Edelgard smiled fondly at the false ease with which he transferred his attention; while he appeared to have returned to his reading, she knew that the cogs of his mind had been set into motion.

She could only hope that whatever he decided to do, however he decided to approach the situation with which she’d approached him, Hilda would not be punished for Edelgard’s own folly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you haven't, check out the _amazing_ illustration by Jess (@charbon_et_eau) on [twitter.](https://twitter.com/Charbon_et_Eau/status/1300966636367745024?s=20)
> 
> Thanks to my lovely beta, [Lily,](LINK) for her work. There was a lot of it. So much. This fic would not be half as good without her. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	2. Turning

_ buzz buzz _

_ buzz buzz _

Edelgard squinted at her phone as it rumbled in her hand. One of the…  _ less  _ salacious photos that she’d received from Hilda over the past few weeks bounced about on the screen, the presence of a contact photo indicating that Hilda was calling her.

Sighing, Edelgard set the phone face-down on an empty space on her bed. Ever since they’d met, she’d been getting calls from Hilda more often than not. Well, she more commonly received texts, but Hilda seemed to find a particular joy in actually  _ calling  _ whenever she felt like having a meeting.

‘Booty calls,’ Hilda called them, and every time Edelgard heard her say it, she couldn’t help but laugh.

Hilda was such an odd creature. Most people, when approached by a vampire that wished to drink their blood, would run away in fear for their life. As they rightly should! Vampires were parasites, a scourge to humanity that by all rights should never have been allowed to persist.

But against all odds, Hilda didn’t seem to be properly terrified of her. Perhaps her constant excitement at seeing had something to do with the fact that she could undoubtedly take care of herself. Maybe she enjoyed the way in which their frequent meetings so often turned the vampire/victim status quo on its head. Edelgard always held herself back, for fear of accidentally wounding or harming Hilda, but Hilda never had such concern. She took what she wanted when and how she wanted it, hence the ‘booty calls.’

Tonight, though, Edelgard felt like letting Hilda’s call remain unanswered. She was tired, and it was barely even evening. By all rights, she should still be sleeping. But as soon as she let Hilda’s call go to voicemail, her phone begin to ring obnoxiously once more. It was a sign of Hilda’s persistence. Any other time, Edelgard would have been impressed by her determination to ‘get some action,’ as Hilda would say.

Slowly, reluctantly, Edelgard picked up her phone. She knew that if she didn’t tell Hilda off directly, her evening would only be plagued by the constant reading of her phone. Sliding her thumb across the screen, unlocking the phone, and turning on speakerphone, she held it up in front of her face and groggily mumbled, “Yes?”

Hilda’s voice, distant and muted, came out of the speaker.

“—need you to—”

Edelgard frowned. She could barely make Hilda out, she sounded so distraught.

“Calm down, Hilda,” she said, trying to keep her voice as steady and neutral as possible. Neither of them would benefit from her getting equally upset. “What did you say?”

There was a scuffling noise, it sounded like her phone was dropped to the ground, and the next time she heard Hilda, her voice was much clearer.

“Come here,” she heard Hilda say. “Someone—they broke—”

Without a moment’s warning, the phone shut off.

Edelgard frantically tapped the screen over and over again, trying and trying and failing to turn it on again as her pulse quickened. Hadn’t her phone been plugged in? The end of the charger cord that went into her phone seemed to be secure; she rolled over onto her side to inspect the outlet the other side was plugged in at. Her heart dropped as she realized that the charger had partially fallen out of the outlet. Which meant that it hadn’t changed all day. Which meant it was completely dead. Which meant that she was without a phone.

But that was fine, right? After all, she’d spent the first few decades of her conscious life sans cellular access. She’d only adopted the practice of keeping her cell phone on her within the last few years, too. And if she were to be entirely honest, she’d only actually begun to use it regularly since meeting Hilda.

What  _ wasn’t  _ fine was the way Hilda had sounded. Few things  _ actually _ scared Hilda, after all, and if she was feeling so desperate as to call Edelgard for help, then she felt obligated to respond to that call.

* * *

Entering Hilda’s apartment by way of her bedroom window, which Hilda had shown her how to pry open even without the use of a key, Edelgard was immediately taken aback by the overwhelming scent of blood. Cloying and thick, it seemed to cling to every surface in Hilda’s bedroom despite the fact that she couldn’t actually see any blood.

No, that privilege was reserved for the moment in which Edelgard eased open the bedroom door and looked onto the living room.

It was utterly destroyed. 

Every piece of furniture, lovingly selected and haphazardly arranged by its owner, had been tossed over and thrown around without regard for where it landed. A sofa sat propped up against a wall, chairs were upside down, books had been torn from their bookcases and strewn about.

The sliding glass door that led out to the apartment balcony had been smashed into thousands of tiny pieces from outside. Each piece of glass winked at her knowingly from where they sat on the ground, and it was only because of her bare feet that Edelgard refrained from grinding each and every false star deep into the carpet.

And then, Edelgard froze.

Hilda lay among it all, splayed out on the floor and looking for all the world like a discarded toy.

Blood stained her otherwise bright clothing, and judging by the deep gash on her neck, the nicks and cuts which covered her body, too much of it seemed to be hers. It wasn’t as though she’d gone down without a fight, though, for as Edelgard hurried to kneel by her side without any regard for the shards of broken glass surrounding her, she noted that her knuckles were bruised and the usually immaculate sheen of her nail polish was chipped.

Breathing deeply, desperately trying to keep the scent of Hilda’s sweet blood from making her unnecessarily heady, Edelgard steeled her heart. She had seen a corpse before—and had herself been responsible for many, before Hubert had taken her under his wing—but never before had it belonged to a person for whom she cared so much.

She gathered as much of Hilda’s body up in her arms as she could and pulled her closer. The sight of Hilda’s head lolling limply about before Edelgard was able to settle it upon her lap was a sickening one; she hunched over Hilda and cradled her close like the precious treasure she was.

“This never should have happened,” Edelgard whispered, holding Hilda’s cheek in the palm of her hand and gently stroking it with her thumb. It was fortunate that Hilda was unconscious, for with each pass of her thumb, another smudge of dirt and blood appeared on her slowly paling skin.

She knew how lonely it was to be a vampire. Everyone she had ever loved had passed on around her, and save for Hubert, she had been left to stand alone for the remainder of eternity. She could save Hilda, yes, but she couldn’t condemn her to such a fate. Not without her approval, her permission.

Hilda’s skin began to grow increasingly clammy beneath her palm, reminding Edelgard of how little time remained before Hilda was lost forever. She could be as moralistic as she liked, but the fact remained that ultimately, she only had two options at her disposal. She could either do nothing and let Hilda’s inevitable death take its course, or she could take the plunge, turn Hilda, and let nature take its course. 

Then it dawned upon her: while a vampire’s curse could never be truly undone, granting Hilda the chance to survive the night would at least allow the maiden a chance to choose life or death for herself. And such, Edelgard found that the decision she had to make was far easier than she’d made it out to be.

Finding a blade was a simple enough matter. She had found Hilda’s prone form laying before the remnants of a broken window, after all, and it was among the broken glass that she knelt. Edelgard rolled her sleeve up to her elbow and, with a deep, trembling breath, picked up the nearest shard of glass. With it, she drew a crimson line across the pale flesh of her forearm.

Blood, smooth and crimson, trickled down from her self-inflicted wound and splattered in thick drops on the ground and her skirt alike. Hurriedly, Edelgard repositioned her arm so that her blood could fall into Hilda’s open mouth. She had never performed a transformation herself, but as her cascading blood tarnished Hilda’s pale, barely moving lips, she felt confident in her instinct-fueled actions.

Even so, it wasn’t enough.

There was no indication that her blood was having any effect on Hilda—or if it was, it was taking a remarkably long time. Time that she feared Hilda did not have to waste.

Edelgard immediately changed course. Instead of allowing her blood to continue taking its sweet, leisurely time, she brought her forearm up to her mouth and sucked. Her own blood tasted flat and unpleasant as it filled her mouth, yet as much as she wished to stop and retch, determination to preserve what remained of Hilda’s life steeled her resolve.

The very moment that she could take nothing more in, Edelgard let her arm drop. Then, turning to cradle Hilda’s head gently, she leaned down and pressed her lips against Hilda’s in an urgent, open-mouthed kiss.

Blood flowed from Edelgard’s mouth and into Hilda’s. Immediately, Edelgard noticed a marked improvement in her complexion. It was far from the spirited glow of the living being Hilda had once been, instead veering towards the pallid hue of Edelgard’s own skin, but that was the exact result she had been so desperately hoping for.

Hilda’s eyes snapped open, beautiful and bright with panic; she immediately turned her gaze upon Edelgard. Whether she was seeking for answers or for comfort, Edelgard couldn’t tell, but Hilda’s muted cries of pain tore at her heart.

“It won’t last long,” Edelgard whispered. Licking her thumb, she wiped away a smudge of blood that had begun to dry at the corner of Hilda’s trembling mouth. “I know it hurts, Hilda, but it’ll soon be over. Try to relax; I will be here to watch over you.”

From that moment on, it was only a matter of time. As painful as it was to do nothing but watch her curse wash over Hilda and tortuously contort her body, there was nothing left for Edelgard to do but sit back and simply give Hilda a safe place to rest her head.

Her own transformation had occurred many, many years ago, yet Edelgard felt Hilda’s agony as keenly as if it was once again  _ herself  _ undergoing that immense physical change. It wasn’t difficult to imagine the feeling of acid coursing through her veins, the re-wiring of her entire physiology to better suit that which she was becoming, or even the excruciating hunger that would soon burn through her body.

It had been agonizing. It had been exquisite. It had been both everything she’d ever wanted and the thing she wouldn’t even wish upon her worst enemy. She barely remembered anything from her mindless existence before Hubert found her, but she remembered that.

When Hilda’s thrashing about abated in favor of a calm, restful peace, Edelgard found herself finally able to breathe again. And when Hilda’s eyes opened to reveal the briefest, most beautiful glint of the otherworldly and inhuman backlight that Edelgard knew characterized her own gaze, she found herself overwhelmed with relief.

The transformation had taken.

As she gently hushed Hilda under her breath, Edelgard pushed her finger against the other woman’s upper lip. Just to make sure. But just as she’d known it would, a sharp, pearly fang greeted her. Almost as though she was reacting to the air brushing against the new growth, Hilda whimpered.

“It feels like I’m on fire,” she whispered, grabbing for Edelgard’s hand and squeezing it tight.

“I know, I know,” Edelgard hushed her as she gently, sympathetically brushed bloodstained hair away from Hilda’s pained, contorted expression. “You’re hungry, Hilda. You need to eat. Then, the fire will fade.”

“To… eat?” Hilda’s brows drew together. “But I’m—”

Edelgard realized that Hilda must be feeling incredibly disoriented, so with a deep breath, she organized her memories of the night’s events. “You called me, asking for help, but when I arrived, you were nearly dead.” She paused. “I think that for anyone else, you  _ would  _ have been dead. But there was enough—you were alive enough that I could turn you.”

“Turn me?”

“Ah, I fed you my blood,” Edelgard elaborated, “which would make you—well, that is—”

“ _ Edelgard. _ ” Her bones ground together as Hilda’s grip on her hand tightened. “Tell me.”

“I turned you into a vampire like me,” she finally admitted. Hilda’s eyes widened in shock and Edelgard rushed to apologize. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else to do.”

Hilda didn’t say anything, leaving Edelgard terrified about how she’d react once she was lucid enough to actually understand what had happened to her. Thankfully, though, she didn’t have the time to think too long or too hard about it. Whoever had hurt Hilda was still out there, and she didn’t know if they planned to come back

“I need you to walk, now,” Edelgard said, not unkindly, as she stood up and pulled Hilda up onto her shoulder. “We need to get you out of here.” Hilda’s eyelids fluttered ever-so-slightly, and Edelgard’s chest seized with fear 

“I hurt all over…” Hilda groaned softly.

“I know, I know,” Edelgard reached across her chest to gently cup Hilda’s cheek, brush her thumb across her cheekbone. “I know, Hilda. It’ll all be alright soon; I just need to get you home.”

“But I  _ am— _ ”

“To  _ my  _ home,” Edelgard clarified. “We can’t stay here any longer. You were attacked. I don’t know if anyone plans to come back and make sure the job was done right.”

Hilda’s lips tightened with determination, even though she was clearly exhausted. And then, with great labor on her part, she stumbled forwards. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to give Edelgard hope that they could get home safely.

Once again, she wished that her phone hadn’t drained so quickly as it had—not that alerting an ambulance to their predicament would do much good now, considering that Hilda was as far from a living human as she could ever get. But it would have allowed her to reach out to Hubert, who could have brought a car around to shorten the distance they would have to walk home in this state.

Then, it struck her—Hilda had called her in the first place, before falling unconscious. Thus, it stood to reason that her own cellphone must be nearby.

Edelgard looked over her shoulder, back at the mess of glass and blood in which she’d found Hilda laying just a few short minutes ago. Hilda’s phone wasn’t hard to pinpoint, thanks to the moonlight which shone in through the broken window and glinted off the ridiculously glittery phone case which Hilda employed. It lay just a few feet away, close enough that Edelgard could step to the side and kneel down to pick it up with minimal effort. Hilda moaned in pain again at the unexpected movement, to which Edelgard murmured an apology.

Thankfully, Hilda seemed to pick up on her intentions easily enough, and she held out a hand so Edelgard could bypass the fingerprinted lock and open the phone. She knew Hubert’s number by heart, of course. Even so, when he picked up with a gruff, “Yes?” Edelgard sighed in relief.

“I need you to come pick me up,” she said.

“Where are you?”

“Hilda’s apartment. I trust you know where it is.”

“I will be there in nine minutes.”

Edelgard raised a brow. She knew that he was aware of Hilda’s whereabouts, but it surprised her that he knew exactly how long it would take for him to arrive. Had he already scouted out the distance between their home and Hilda’s apartment? She would have to ask later, though. There were more important things at hand.

“Thank you, Hubert.”

“Hm.”

“And Hubert?”

“Yes?”

“Prepare for a guest.”

She did not give Hubert a chance to reply before hanging up and returning her attention to Hilda.

* * *

Eight minutes and thirty-seven seconds later—Edelgard did not time it herself, but Hubert held up and displayed the timer on his phone as she loaded Hilda into the back seat of the car and slid in beside her—they were on their way home. Hilda leaned against Edelgard, her breathing slow and dangerously shallow, and Edelgard held her close.

“Why do you have Miss Goneril with you?” Hubert asked, meeting Edelgard’s eyes by way of the rearview mirror.

“She was attacked in her home,” Edelgard said as she absentmindedly stroked Hilda’s hair. It was thick and clotted with her own blood, and her blonde roots seemed almost white against the deep red color. “She called me, and I came to help her.”

“If she called you and you were able to pick up, why did you call me from—I assume that was  _ her  _ phone?”

“My phone died while I was talking to her.”

The ever-present line between Hubert’s brows deepened.

“She had your number.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement. Edelgard answered it with a shrug, and returned her attention to Hilda.

Out of the corner of her eye, however, she saw Hubert’s gaze drift down towards Hilda’s neck. His mouth opened, and she felt his question before he could ask it.

“I did it, yes.” Edelgard’s voice was thick with remorse; she cleared her throat in the hopes that Hubert could actually hear her this time. She had no doubt that he understood what she’d done despite her reluctance to actually say the words: that she had stripped Hilda of her humanity. But she felt compelled to come clean, nonetheless. Hilda, nearly unconscious as she was, deserved at least that dignity. “I turned her.”

Hubert’s jaw tightened. Edelgard could only begin to imagine what must have been going through his mind. They’d never discussed a contingency plan for an event like this, after all.

Even so, she chanced to say, speaking quietly despite the fact that Hilda was close enough to hear her, “She’s going to need to eat, Hubert. She’ll only starve if I continue to feed her.”

“For you, Edelgard, you know I would do anything.”

Edelgard met his withering gaze as he glanced at her over his shoulder. She knew where this was going, and she did not like it.

“But for  _ her _ ?” Hubert continued, gesturing angrily with one hand. “Who has done nothing but turn our lives upside down since the moment she entered them? Who has endangered your livelihood and risked your future? I will do no such thing.”

“Hubert—” Edelgard tried to protest, but her companion shook his head decisively.

“She doesn’t deserve my effort.”

“Hubert.” Edelgard pushed away the temptation of layering her voice with all of the command her nature allowed her, of amplifying it with immeasurable power and ancient magic. Instead, when she spoke again, she spoke plainly. Truthfully. “Hubert, she needs to eat. I do not have the time, nor the strength to go forth and find another human for her to drink from. I could command you to do it, and you would, but I would far rather ask you to do it willingly. For me, if not for her.”

With each word that dropped from her mouth, the knot her stomach had begun to tie itself into tightened. She had put her best foot forward; it was now up to Hubert to determine whether her effort was enough.

Hubert was silent, and he appeared to be at least considering her words. When he finally spoke, his voice was tight with resignation. His knuckles whitened as he gripped the steering wheel of the car. “Edelgard, you know I—”

“I’ll turn you.”

Edelgard’s interruption took Hubert by surprise, though he was conscious enough of where they were to stop himself from losing control of the car. Dark eyes wide with surprise, he looked up into the rearview mirror and met Edelgard’s steady gaze.

“What did you say?” he asked, his deep voice rumbling like thunder.

“I’ll turn you,” Edelgard repeated, lifting her chin in determination. Her heart fluttered as the finality of her offer settled around her shoulders. “I know you want it of me, that you’re worried about what I’ll do after you’re dead. Will I remain among humans? Will I return to the beastlike existence in which you first found me? If you let me do this, you’ll be able to stay with me. Forever.”

She closed her eyes and swallowed with difficulty. Her mouth was dry. “I won’t even have her bite you. Just… just let me take some of your blood for her. Just enough for her to quell that first hungry fire. Let me teach her to eat.”

Hubert said nothing more, but returned his attention to the road before them. He did not speak again until they arrived at their home, and after Edelgard put Hilda to rest in her bedroom, he disappeared into his own room.

When he finally rejoined Edelgard in her bedroom, coming to stand before her as she sat by Hilda’s curled up, whimpering, pitiful form, he held out a glass.

“Thank you,” Edelgard whispered hoarsely as she accepted the glass with both hands. The smell of Hubert’s blood, warm and familiar, brought a precious comfort to her very soul. Hubert only grunted, crossing his arms over his chest, but even the deftness with which he moved was not enough to obscure the thick bandage which now wrapped around his wrist.

“I will keep my promise,” she added with a feeble smile. “Please, Hubert, give me a few days to get Hilda accustomed to this. It’s like teaching a child to walk; once she has an idea of what to do, then it will all come to her easily enough. And then…”

Hubert nodded. Then, after a moment of hesitation, he gently set his hand down on Edelgard’s shoulder. “She will recover,” he said gruffly as Edelgard gratefully covered his hand with one of her own.

“I can only hope she doesn’t despise me for my decision,” Edelgard replied in a quiet voice. “It was not an easy one to make.” 

Her friend squeezed her shoulder one last time before leaving Edelgard to the task at hand.

Returning her attention to the glass of warm blood in her hand, Edelgard swirled the liquid around in the glass for a moment. Hilda squirmed on Edelgard’s bed, sniffing the air, and when Edelgard looked over to see what she was up to, she met Hilda’s bright eyes.

“That smells good,” Hilda said, and Edelgard smiled at the relief that washed over her at the sound of her voice.

“It tastes good too,” Edelgard said, the teasing tone of her voice bringing a faint smile to Hilda’s features. Hilda took a deep, shuddering breath and closed her eyes.

“So that really happened,” she mumbled as she pulled herself up into a seated position and pushed herself up against the headboard of the bed. Then, with an unexpected groan, Hilda clutched at her stomach and curled in on herself. “Ughh, this is the  _ worst _ thing  _ ever, _ ” she moaned before turning to look at Edelgard. “Is this how you feel all the time?”

“Like you’re filled with an endless desire for  _ more _ , from which you will never find relief?” Tucking loose hair behind her ear, Edelgard chuckled. “Only if I am negligent of my needs. Speaking of which…”

Lifting the glass of Hubert’s blood to her lips, Edelgard took a long, languorous sip. She could feel Hilda’s eyes on her as she swished it around the liquid around her mouth, as she let it coat every last bit of her tongue, as she swallowed with satisfaction. Licking her lips, Edelgard sighed. Whether she meant to or not, Hilda mimicked her motion and licked her own lips.

“Can I—?” Hilda asked breathlessly, her eyes not straying from Edelgard’s lips.

Lifting her brows, Edelgard nodded. And, with a wink that made Hilda’s eyes grow wide, she brought the glass of blood to her mouth once more. When her mouth was full and she could hold no more, she leaned out of her chair towards Hilda. Hilda eagerly came to meet her, practically trembling with excitement, and as their lips crashed together, Edelgard realized that Hilda must have been even hungrier than she had let on.

Letting her lips part, Edelgard tilted Hilda’s head back so that the blood she’d been holding onto could flow into Hilda’s mouth. Hilda received it ravenously, like she’d been stranded in a desert for days on end with nothing to drink. And when they pulled apart, Edelgard noted that Hilda’s eyes had narrowed with pleasure. Gently, Edelgard brushed her finger against Hilda’s red-stained lips, and without breaking away from Hilda’s gaze, ran her finger down the side of her neck, along her jugular vein. Then, as Hilda’s eyes locked onto the smear of sweet-smelling blood, Edelgard smiled.

Her blood would have no nutritional value for Hilda; that was the whole reason she had begged Hubert so desperately for his donation. But Hilda needed to learn how to bite one way or another, and she didn’t want to start Hilda off with a handicap if she could help it.

Nonetheless, she tilted her head to the side, putting the mark she’d made on full display.

“Is it okay?” Hilda asked, her chest rising and falling heavily with the effort of holding herself back.

“For you?” Edelgard said as she sat down on the bed beside Hilda. “Always.”

Slowly, reverentially, like she had just been handed the greatest present in the world, Hilda set one hand on the side of Edelgard’s head to prop her up. With her other hand, she pushed Edelgard’s shoulder down so that she had full access to the blood on Edelgard’s neck, as well as the quick-pulsing vein that lay beneath.

And then she was on her. Pushing Edelgard over onto the bed was an easy matter for someone as strong as Hilda, and Edelgard didn’t have even a moment to cry out in surprise before Hilda nosed her way into the crook of Edelgard’s shoulder and nuzzled against her neck.

Then, sharp and smooth like a new blade, Hilda’s fangs cut through Edelgard’s skin. Edelgard inhaled sharply at the sudden onset of pain, but just as Edelgard had once done for Hilda, the toxin laced through Hilda’s bite brought some relief to what might have been unbearable pain otherwise.

Hilda needed no further guiding after that.

Driven by instinct and fueled by hunger, Hilda drank greedily from the incisions she had created. Edelgard struggled to keep her breaths slow and even, measured despite the unfamiliar feelings of euphoria that rushed through her. This was her prize for being Hilda’s meal, she knew that, but she still found herself trembling shamelessly beneath Hilda’s touch as the other woman sucked and licked and nipped.

It wasn’t until each breath became notably laborious that Edelgard remembered that as a new vampire, Hilda had yet to learn how to restrain herself. Not only that, but Edelgard herself, who had already lost blood in the process of turning Hilda, was starting to become dangerously light-headed and weak-kneed.

“Hilda.” With the hand that hadn’t been pinned down beneath Hilda as she’d toppled over, Edelgard shoved Hilda away. “Hilda, stop.”

With a final lick _ ,  _ as though she was determined to finish receiving her dues, Hilda begrudgingly rolled off of Edelgard. “That was the best thing I’ve ever had,” she sighed, resting her hands atop her belly.

“Then it’s good there’s a bit more for you,” Edelgard said as she languidly pointed towards the long-abandoned glass that Hubert had supplied them with.

“But don’t  _ you  _ need to drink something?” Hilda asked, and Edelgard could hear the worry in her voice. “I mean, I don’t—I didn’t  _ hurt  _ you, right?”

With a chuckle, Edelgard waved off Hilda’s concern. “I’m an older vampire than you, Hilda. I’ve handled worse.”

“Yeah, but—”

“No. You drink it.”

Hilda frowned at Edelgard’s answer, and narrowing her eyes, she reached up to poke at the sallowness of Edelgard’s cheek. “That’s not good enough, silly. You’ve still gotta teach me more, and I’m  _ not  _ doing this alone.”

“I’ll ask Hubert for a sip more after he’s had some time to rest,” Edelgard finally compromised. Then, she frowned. She wouldn’t be able to count on Hubert’s blood for much longer, she realized, not if she intended to go through with her promise—which she did. But it was another problem for another day.

When she looked over at Hilda to ask if she was feeling any better, she smiled to see that not only were Hilda’s eyes closed, but that she had begun to snore softly. She hadn’t even bothered to wipe off the blood that surrounded the skin around her mouth before falling asleep. Rolling her eyes, Edelgard pulled her hand out from beneath Hilda’s body and rolled over for a nap of her own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check out the art by Jess (@charbon_et_eau) on [twitter! ](https://twitter.com/Charbon_et_Eau/status/1300966636367745024?s=20)
> 
> Thank you so much for reading; one more chapter left~


	3. Accepting

“And you’re  _ sure  _ no one is going to sneak up on us?” Edelgard asked, crossing her arms over her chest as she glanced around Hilda’s bedroom.

It had been against her better judgement to return to Hilda’s apartment, considering that it had been the place where Hilda had been attacked, where Edelgard had both found and turned her. There were certain things that Hilda claimed to be in desperate need of, however, things that she apparently couldn’t survive without, and so they had crept into her otherwise vacated apartment just a few short days after Edelgard had turned the other woman.

“No one has the reason or means to intrude, correct?” Her attention lingered on the broken window through which they’d entered. Oh, this was  _ such _ a horrible idea. “Your life was endangered once before. And while you may be a vampire now, there are still methods by which you can be harmed.”

“Yeah, yeah. We’re good, I promise.” Hilda grinned at Edelgard from where she was rooting around in her closet. Grabbing a lacy shirt and pulling it off of its hanger, she tossed the article of clothing onto the steadily growing pile on her bed. “The only person who knew I was living here in the first place was my brother. And sure, sometimes he checks up on me, but that’s only on the weekend.”

She winked at Edelgard, who couldn’t help but smile in response. Infuriating as she was, Hilda had that effect. “And if you remember, it’s currently a Thursday. So we’re  _ great.  _ Absolutely zero problems.” 

Edelgard chuckled briefly before her expression turned dark. “And you don’t have any—there’s no other suitors or companions that we need to take into consideration?”

“ _ Edelgard _ !” Hilda gasped, setting a hand on her chest as though she had been deeply wounded by Edelgard’s question. “Of  _ course  _ not! You know there’s no one else in my heart but you.” Edelgard rolled her eyes, to which Hilda gasped again. This time, she bounced across the room to wrap her arms around Edelgard’s neck.

“You’re so damn cute when you’re jealous,” she giggled, tightening her grasp slightly before kissing Edelgard’s cheek.

“I’m  _ not  _ jealous,” Edelgard murmured gruffly as she wiped away the sticky lip gloss left behind by Hilda’s show of affection. She could be possessive, yes, but  _ jealous _ ? She’d like to consider herself to be somewhat above such a base emotion.

Hilda pecked her cheek again, effectively undoing Edelgard’s efforts to clear her face of lip gloss smudges. “You’re  _ jealous _ ,” she said again, this time with a smug expression, “and  _ I  _ just so happen to be super into it.”

“I would, as you say, be  _ super  _ into it,” Edelgard said, “if you continued with your task so that we could finish up here and leave. I don’t feel particularly comfortable with the notion of staying around here much longer.”

“So what you’re saying is,” Hilda mused as she nuzzled up against Edelgard’s neck, “is that if I hurry up and get out of here, you’d find yourself so into it, maybe, that you might feel like getting some takeout before getting down and dirty?” She waggled her brows as she delivered her innuendo.

With no small amount of effort, Edelgard shrugged her way out of Hilda’s formidable grasp, took Hilda’s place in the closet, and began haphazardly taking down the clothes that were hanging up. “I might consider it,” she said while unceremoniously dumping an armful of Hilda’s clothes onto the pile on her suitcase, “but only if we leave within the next half-hour. Hubert’s going to start worrying about us soon, and if he begins to worry, it will be nearly impossible to end his inevitable rampage to ensure my safety.”

Leaning up against her chest of drawers, Hilda groaned. “Hubert, Hubert,  _ Hubert. _ ” She shook her head. “What’s his  _ issue,  _ anyway?”

“He’s protected me for almost all of his life,” Edelgard said distractedly, most of her attention going towards the task of packing up Hilda’s belongings. “It’s only recently that I’ve given him cause to worry.”

She glanced towards Hilda, a teasing glint in her eye. “I can only wonder what might have changed.”

Hilda looked for all the world like she didn’t understand what Edelgard was saying. “Huh,” she said, perfectly nonchalant. “I have  _ no  _ clue.”

Edelgard chuckled. Hilda had certainly shaken up the prior ease of their day-to-day life, but she was fond enough of the young woman that she could no longer remember what it had been like without her. And, judging by the bold smile that Hilda shone her way, Edelgard had hope that perhaps Hilda felt similarly.

She had no doubt, however, once Hilda’s arms settled around her waist from behind and squeezed her close. “I have a few guesses, though,” she purred in Edelgard’s ear. “Should we see if any of them are right?”

Snorting with laughter, Edelgard shook her head. “Not now,” she said. “We need to finish packing up so we can leave town.”

Hilda hummed as she set her chin down on Edelgard’s shoulder. “That’s so much  _ work, _ ” she whined. “Can’t we at least have some  _ fun  _ first?”

“What kind of fun do you have in mind?” Edelgard glanced over her shoulder at Hilda’s smug expression. “I don’t think we should get up to much, since we really do need to leave soon.”

With a joyous little shriek, Hilda let go of Edelgard and dove into what remained of her closet. “We’re the same size, right? I’ve got this dress that I think will look  _ amazing _ on you, and I’m not gonna leave this apartment until you try it on.”

Edelgard pressed a hand over her heart with a confused smile. That wasn’t what she’d expected to hear when Hilda had said she wanted to have a bit of fun, but hopefully her plot of playing dress-up would take less time than any of the  _ other  _ pastimes she’d expected Hilda to suggest they take up.

“As long as you manage to be both quick and efficient in your selection,” Edelgard reminded her sternly. Hilda waved her concerns away with ease.

“Are you  _ judging  _ me right now, Edelgard?” Hilda said, her voice muffled as she continued rustling around in search of her prey. “Are you  _ belittling  _ the amount of work it takes to get your taste in clothing back to the present day?” 

Edelgard giggled, much to her surprise, and sat down on Hilda’s bed. “I didn’t realize you held so much vitriol towards my clothes.”

“I wouldn’t put it like  _ that. _ ” Hilda glanced over her shoulder and grinned cheekily. “I just think you have a tendency to be… I dunno, a little frumpy.”

“Frumpy,” Edelgard repeated, crossing her arms over her chest. “Is this because of my age? I already told you, I don’t know how old I am. I haven’t physically aged within recent memory, so it doesn’t really matter much. You’ll understand soon—"

“Because I’m a hot-ass vampire now?”

“—because you probably won’t age anymore, either.” Edelgard hesitated. “So… yes. It’s because you’re a hot-ass vampire.”

“Aww,” Hilda crooned, abandoning her quest in the closet in favor of walking over to her bed and straddling Edelgard’s lap. She loosely looped her arms around Edelgard’s shoulders, and leaned in to press her lips against Edelgard’s cheek again. Edelgard made a mental note to build up a resistance to that particular display of affection; Hilda seemed to be especially fond of using it against her. “You think I’m  _ hot. _ ”

“I think many things about you,” Edelgard began, but Hilda put a finger against her mouth before she could say anything else.

“Just let me bask in the moment, okay?” 

A smile, small and warm, spread across Edelgard’s face. Hilda was such a chaotic person. She hid the true intensity of her feelings beneath a veneer of self-absorption, but what she  _ did  _ show was often so real, so genuine, that Edelgard couldn’t help but be amazed.

She knew that her own emotions had become muted over time, after years of solitude, but that they had flared up ever since having met Hilda. Hilda’s sheer vivacity had made Edelgard fall in love with life again, and Edelgard could only hope beyond hope that Hilda’s new vampiric state wouldn’t give her cause to lose that enthusiasm.

“…Okay.” Edelgard caught up a bit of Hilda’s hair that had fallen over her shoulder in her hand and brought it up to her lips. “Bask away.”

Hilda giggled and leaned in to rest her forehead against Edelgard’s shoulder. In turn, Edelgard wrapped her arms around Hilda’s lower back, closed her eyes, and sighed.

She wanted the moment to last forever. And who was to say that it couldn’t?

A sudden sound came from the direction of the front door, the sound of someone inserting a key into the lock and turning the knob interrupting the delightful moment between her and Hilda.

Edelgard froze. Slowly, she looked up to meet Hilda’s eyes, who had blanched at the sound.

“I thought you said that we had nothing to worry about,” Edelgard hissed, so quietly that only Hilda’s heightened senses would be able to pick up on her voice.

“We shouldn’t have!” Hilda responded similarly. “No one should be coming here!”

The door creaked as it opened; Edelgard gestured for Hilda to investigate. Despite the bloody, destroyed state of Hilda’s living room, it would make much more sense for Hilda to be seen. Hilda agreed with a silent nod.

“Hello?” The intruder called out, and Hilda’s tight-pressed lips paled. “Hilda, are you home?”

Recognition flickered in Hilda’s eyes, and the fear that had momentarily cloyed her features melted away to a simpler irritation. Sulkily, like she’d been caught, Hilda rose from Edelgard’s lap and slunk out of the room. Standing up, Edelgard followed closely behind her, but while Hilda went into the living room, she stopped just out of eyesight.

“Holst!” she heard Hilda say excitedly, confusedly. Edelgard frowned. She knew Hilda had a brother. Was this him?

“Oh my god, Hilda!” The intruder sounded immeasurably relieved to see Hilda, and as Hilda squeaked wordlessly in response, Edelgard could only guess that she’d been wrapped up in a bone-crushing embrace and thoroughly squeezed. “I thought you were dead!”

“What? Why would you think that?” Hilda laughed nervously.

“The family got a letter from one of the wolves we’ve been tracking down.” Holst spoke rapidly, his voice wavering like he’d been holding back a flood of emotions until just then. “They sent a picture of you on the floor, just over there, surrounded by blood and broken glass—” His voice broke. “They said that we killed their brother, so it was only right that they killed our sister in return.”

“What?” Hilda sounded incredulous. “But I haven’t been a hunter for  _ months _ —and how did they find me anyway?”

“I had your address written down in the glovebox of my car. They broke in and stole it, but I didn’t realize it was missing until after we got the letter.” Edelgard rolled her eyes as Holst began to cry. It was beginning to look like she’d have to stay tucked away in Hilda’s bedroom for quite some time. “I’m so sorry, Hilda. I’m so glad you’re safe.”

More important than her frustration at having to continue hiding, however, were the questions that the siblings’ conversation was bringing to her attention. Edelgard frowned and lifted her hands to rub gently at her temples.

Wolves. Hunters. Hilda was obviously a very active person, whether she wanted to be or not, so it would make sense that she and her family could be hunters. What  _ didn’t  _ make sense, however, was the idea that wolves could somehow write letters and get revenge.

Unless—

Were they referring to  _ werewolves _ ? Edelgard knew they existed—she’d had a few run-ins with them over the course of her life—and the ones that she’d met were almost impossibly protective of their own.

But if Hilda and Holst were the sort of hunters to go out and hunt werewolves, then they couldn’t be just any hunters.

They had to be  _ monster  _ hunters.

Edelgard shoved a knuckle into her mouth in an attempt to keep her gasp from ringing out and alerting Holst to her existence, and bit down hard with her front teeth.

Was  _ that  _ the reason Hilda had managed to get the drop on her, the second time Edelgard had come by to visit? Was  _ that _ why Hilda had remembered her despite every other victim forgetting her desperate bite? All of these questions that Edelgard had pushed to the back of her brain in her attempts to preserve Hilda’s life and help her adjust to her new one suddenly resurfaced.

She wanted to jump out, right then and there, and confront Hilda and Holst. To assure herself that everything was alright, and their lives weren’t endangered in any way. But Edelgard had been around long enough to know that doing so would be folly. Even if Hilda were no longer a hunter, it seemed as though her brother still was, and if she revealed herself, she could potentially put herself—and Hilda, now—in danger.

But so many questions were brought up. If Hilda had known that she was a vampire, and knew that she had been bitten, then what had stopped her from doing away with Edelgard at the very beginning? What had stilled her hand? Why hadn’t Hilda immediately asked her to stake her through the heart after realizing that she’d been turned?

The choking fog of questions, both old and new, threatened to overwhelm her. They very nearly did.

Only Hilda’s shrill voice kept her grounded.

“No, Holst, you keep your ass out of my room!”

“I’m just going to look around! I need to see if the wolves that attacked you left anything incriminating behind.”

“They broke in through the window in my  _ living room,  _ Holst! Why do you need to go into my room?”

It occurred to Edelgard that if the two siblings were heading towards Hilda’s room, she only had a few moments to hide. Immediately, she bolted across the room and moved to hide in the space between the other side of Hilda’s bed and the wall, but before she could completely obscure her presence, Hilda’s brother burst into the room.

Despite being just a few inches taller than Hilda, Holst carried himself in a much more intimidating manner. Edelgard had never been so unfortunate as to be the focus of any vampire hunter’s attention—save for Hilda’s, apparently—but even just the sight of Holst was enough to make her want to shrivel up and fall out of sight. He was powerful, without a doubt, and Edelgard found herself filled with a deep, primal fear.

It took a moment for Edelgard to realize, however, that Holst wasn’t attacking her. Instead, he stood at the door with a wide smile, his giant fists on his hips.

“You could have just said your girlfriend was here,” he called back to Hilda, whose wide-eyed, terrified expression peeked out from under his arm.

“Y-yeah, I didn’t want to freak her out though.” Hilda laughed nervously. “Edelgard’s a kinda private girl, and I wanted to—”

“Hey there, ma’am,” Holst said as he strode across the room and held out a hand for Edelgard to shake. “I’m Hilda’s brother, Holst. Nice to meet my little sister’s girlfriend.” Edelgard, however, stared at the appendage like it was something completely foreign. Then, slowly, she dragged her eyes up to meet Holst’s.

“Huh?”

Holst laughed, his deep boom of a voice sending a bone-chilling shudder through Edelgard’s body. “I’m trying to say hello, ma’am. Sorry for spooking you.”

Edelgard gave him a tight-lipped smile and gently shook the proffered hand. “I’m Edelgard,” she mumbled with difficulty, incredibly conscious of her fangs, and desperately trying to keep them hidden. She wouldn’t have even tried to get close to him in the first place had it not been for the long, loose nature of her hair keeping the points of her ears concealed. As a former human, however, Hilda had nothing of the like to worry about. Thank heavens. “Nice to meet you.”

With a bold smile, Holst glanced around the room. His eyes lingered on the thrown-around clothes and the overfilled suitcase on the bed, and Edelgard hurried to explain.

“She’s moving in with me.” She crossed her arms over her chest, tipped her head to the side defiantly, and gave Hilda a sharp, pointed look. Edelgard was planning to lie through her teeth, despite the technical half-truth of her tale, and if she wanted to get away with it, she would need Hilda on her side. “Since she was attacked here, she no longer feels safe enough to sleep at night.”

From beneath Holst’s arm, Hilda’s eyes grew wide, and she nodded emphatically.

“Yeah!” she said, slipping in front of Holst and skirting around the room to grab Edelgard’s hand. At her touch, Edelgard found herself smiling in relief. “I’m gonna go stay with Edelgard for, um, a while, so you don’t gotta check on me for a while. Got that, Holst?”

Holst frowned. “I didn’t even know you were dating anyone, and now you’re moving in with her? Why don’t you just move back in with me and Dad? We miss you a lot, and—”

“Nope!” Hilda chirped, cutting her brother off without hesitation. “I am never, ever,  _ ever  _ moving back in with you guys. ‘Cause as soon as I do, I’m gonna get looped back into hunting again, and I  _ really  _ don’t feel like hunting vampires and werewolves and shit anymore.”

Edelgard squeezed Hilda’s hand and smiled faintly at her, but instead of squeezing her hand back, Hilda looped her arm around Edelgard’s and dragged her in close to her side.

“Besides, Holstie,” she simpered, “I’ve got my hot-ass girlfriend to keep me warm now. You don’t gotta worry about your cute little sister anymore.”

“Maybe, but—”

“Nope!”

“ _ Hilda _ , if you’d just  _ listen _ —”

“Not gonna happen!” Hilda pulled down on Edelgard’s arm and kissed her cheek possessively. Finding a sudden interest in the carpeted floor at her feet, Edelgard blushed. “I’m out of the monster hunting business, okay? I appreciate you checking up on me, but I’ve got my own life to live now.”

Holst’s frown pulled on the corners of his mouths down even more sharply. “You understand why I can’t just  _ do  _ that, Hilda. You’re family. And family sticks together, no matter what. That’s the rule. You  _ know  _ this!”

“Well, maybe it’s time to learn how to break a few rules.” Letting go of Edelgard, Hilda set her fists on her hips. “And don’t you dare follow me, either.”

Edelgard side-eyed her, and noting that Hilda seemed pretty dead-set in her defiance, she took it upon herself to squash the lid of Hilda’s suitcase down over the mountain of clothes and secure it. It took more effort than she’d expected. So, praying that Holst and Hilda were too wrapped up in their discussion to cast judgement-filled eyes on her, Edelgard used her full body weight to force the lid closed and laboriously zip it up.

“Are you ready to go?” Edelgard asked as she dragged the suitcase off of the bed and pulled it up into a movable position. Somehow, they’d avoided the issue of Hilda’s vampirism  _ entirely  _ so far, and she wanted to get out of the apartment before there was a chance for that to change.

“Yeah, let’s get out of here.” Hilda flashed a relieved, closed-mouth smile Edelgard’s way, and she grabbed the handle of the suitcase. Holst, to his credit, stepped aside and let Hilda barrel through into the living room without having to run him over. Edelgard followed close behind. 

“Make sure you text me, at least!” Holst called out after them. In response, Hilda held a peace sign high up in the air, and her laughter rang out through the hallway as they ran out of the apartment.

“Are you sure you’re okay with leaving him like that?” Edelgard asked as she hurried to keep pace with Hilda. “You didn’t tell him that I turned you!”

To her surprise, Hilda just tossed her head back and laughed even harder. “It serves him right, doesn’t it? That’s what he  _ gets  _ for getting all up in my business!” Then, looking over and seeing the confusion in Edelgard’s expression, she grinned and pulled her phone out of her pocket. “I’m gonna text him, later. Like,  _ way  _ later. After we’ve gotten the hell out of dodge, later.”

Edelgard sighed, resigned, as she joined Hilda on the sidewalk by where Hubert had left the car idling. “Were you ever planning on telling me what the ‘family business’ was?” she asked, forming air quotes with her fingers around her question.

Shoving her oversized suitcase in the trunk of the car, Hilda wrinkled her nose. “Uh, maybe?” She shrugged. “I kinda wanted to let it fall by the wayside if I could. I haven’t been doing any of that shit for  _ months,  _ and I just…”

Edelgard opened the back door, and the two of them slid in beside each other. Hilda slumped down in her seat and continued, “I guess I really just wanted to focus on having an awesome new life with you. And yeah,  _ maybe  _ I shoulda let you know earlier but, like—”

“Did everything go well?” Hubert asked, glancing over his shoulder from the driver’s seat. Edelgard looked up to meet his eyes and sighed.

“It went,” she said with a tired chuckle. “And—”

Edelgard leaned over to rest her head on Hilda’s shoulder. She hadn’t expected that the seemingly simple process of packing up some of Hilda’s belongings would be so  _ stressful.  _ Hilda reached around to wrap an arm around Edelgard’s shoulder, and the subtle feeling of her fingers combing through Edelgard’s hair brought her comfort.

“—I think it’s over.”

* * *

Another town, another night, the same task at hand.

The wind whipped through Edelgard’s hair as she sat on the edge of a building. She surveyed the darkened sidewalk beneath her with a critical eye, watching for a potential meal to walk into view.

“I always forget how  _ boring _ it is to wait around for dinner,” Hilda whined from her seat beside her as she sagged against Edelgard’s side. “Like, why can I have my phone out? That’d make this whole thing so much easier.”

“The light from your screen would make it easier for people to notice us,” Edelgard explained gently. “You know that, Hilda. Are you alright?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Hilda knocked her head against the bone of Edelgard’s shoulder with an overdramatic groan. “Complaining just makes me feel better, y’know?”

Edelgard chuckled quietly. She did indeed know. Hilda’s complaining was a constant in her life, though Edelgard was well aware of the fact that it was how she coped with the things she didn’t have any control over. It drove Hubert right up a wall, however. While Edelgard found a passing entertainment in their everyday butting of heads, Hubert usually became so frustrated with Hilda that he would go out and hunt for food separately, as he had done that night. To no one’s surprise, Hubert had taken to his new vampiric nature like a fish to water, almost as though he had been made for it. While Edelgard did miss having the company of someone who could act as her human liaison, she  _ had  _ made a promise, and Hubert seemed more than content with the idea of remaining by her side. Less so Hilda’s. 

The nearly silent sound of flats against the sidewalk captured Edelgard’s attention. Intrigued, she peered over the edge of the building to see what sort of person was approaching. A drunkard? A businessman? The options were nearly endless.

But no, it was the best-case scenario. The person appeared to be a young woman. The way her light blue hair was tied up at the nape of her neck perfectly accentuated the smooth, pale length of her neck, and Edelgard smiled hungrily, toothily.

“Hilda,” Edelgard whispered, knocking her knuckles against Hilda’s thigh. “Hilda, someone’s coming.”

“Yeah? What do you see?”

“I think it’s a woman, a young one.”

“Ooh,  _ that  _ sounds familiar.”

Edelgard elbowed Hilda, and she squeaked. Unfortunately, that sound traveled down to the young woman walking down the alley, and she looked up to the top of the building with worried, brown eyes.

“Welp,” Hilda said, “I guess it’s dinnertime.” She pushed herself off the edge of the building with a quiet little  _ whoop _ of elation.

Edelgard, her heart fluttering with excitement for the fullness to come, followed a second after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! It's been a long process to write it, and it wouldn't have been done without my beta, [Lily,](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blooming_Spiderlily/pseuds/Blooming_Spiderlily) there to constantly hype me up. If you haven't seen it, definitely check out the accompanying illustration by Jess(@charbon_et_eau) on [twitter!](https://twitter.com/Charbon_et_Eau/status/1300966636367745024?s=20) I can also be found on Twitter, as @tansybells.
> 
> And if by any chance the little glimmer of Marianne/Hilda/Edelgard piqued your interest, keep an eye on my ao3! I'll begin posting my story, _A Perfect Sapphic Storm_ , in the upcoming weeks. I'm so excited to share it with you! 
> 
> And again, thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed ❤︎


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